Iranian-backed militias say it’s an Israeli covert operation. The U.S. says it’s probably just the heat. There’s an epidemic of mysterious explosions at Iraqi militia bases this summer, and it might be a sign that there’s a whole new shadow war going on in Iraq. Five hundred miles away, an attack by an explosive-laden delivery drone through the window of a Beirut office may have been the opening shot in a second front in Israel’s covert war against Iran. So who’s behind the bombs and why?
Welcome to Rabbit Hole.
Mystery explosions: The first explosion took place on July 19 at an Iranian-backed militia ammunition depot in Amerli, a hundred miles north of Baghdad. Shortly after the explosion, Saudi news outlets quickly claimed that the explosion was the result of an Israeli airstrike that killed Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) advisers and destroyed Iranian ballistic missiles.
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Other ammunition dumps at Iranian-backed Iraqi militia bases suffered similar explosions in quick succession. A little over a week later, a Badr Brigade ammunition dump at Camp Ashraf exploded, and Emirati news outlets ran with similar claims about IRGC advisers and Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed by an Israel airstrike. Last week, another explosion struck an Iraqi militia ammunition storage facility in Balad, which is close to a base that houses U.S. forces and contractors supporting the counter-ISIS mission in Iraq.
Attribution: So who, if anyone, is responsible for the explosions?
The New York Times reported that the explosion in Amerli was the result of an Israeli airstrike against short-range guided missiles, according to a “senior Middle Eastern intelligence” official. The report, co-authored by veteran Israeli intelligence beat reporter Ronen Bergman, also cited anonymous former U.S. officials who claimed that Israel had targeted other Iraqi militia ammo dumps with airstrikes.
Funeral intelligence: The idea that at least some of these bases played home to Iranian advisers or missiles is supported by funeral notices. The day after the Amerli explosion, the IRGC-linked Fars News outlet announced that IRGC officer Abolfazl Sarabian was killed in “the fight against takfiri terrorists in Amerli, Iraq.”
Amir Toumaj, an independent Iran researcher, told The Daily Beast that it’s at least plausible that Sarabian worked for Iran’s covert operations arm, the Qods Foce, given the lack of biographical data available. “If he were a Qods Force member, they would have every reason to try and obfuscate that.”
Weeks later, Iran announced the death of another IRGC officer in Iraq, Hossein Memari, but offered few specifics about the circumstances of his death. “According to state media, he succumbed to wounds sustained several months ago, and was hospitalized in Iraq. It’s unclear whether it’s a cover-up,” Toumaj said. “No other Iranian deaths have been confirmed in Iraq since.”
Clear as mud: In the immediate aftermath of the Amerli explosion, reports cited an airstrike of some kind, possibly involving a drone. When morning came, however, Iraqi security officials changed their story to suggest that the attack may have been the work of a small grenade-dropping drone rather than the kind of Predator-style large aircraft commonly associated with drone strikes. One militia source told Russian propaganda channel RT that the explosion at Camp Ashraf was the result of high temperatures and poor ammunition storage safety.
After more ammunition dumps exploded, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a senior Iraqi Hashd official (sanctioned by the U.S. for his role as an adviser to Iran’s covert action arm and support for attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq) blamed both the U.S. and Israel for the explosions. In a statement, Muhandis alleged a fairly complicated plot involving Israeli leaving Azerbaijan and flying alongside American drones assigned to the counter-ISIS mission in Iraq. A day later, Faleh al-Fayyadh, a more senior Iraqi militia official, dismissed Muhandis’ statement but agreed that the explosions “were the result of an act organized by a foreign side.”
The Trump administration has also tossed its own theory into the fray. State Department officials told reporters that they don’t have anything to back up the Times’ story about Israeli strikes. They did suggest that record high summer temperatures in Iraq could be responsible for the explosions at ammunition dumps.
Tea leaves: If indeed Israel was behind the strike, it would be part of a long-standing policy to preempt the development of strategic weapons by its adversaries. You can see it at work in the Israeli airstrike against a North Korean-design nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007, in the assassination of former Nazi rocket scientist who went to work for Egypt’s ballistic missile program in the 1960s, and in the dozens of airstrikes Israeli warplanes have carried out against suspected missile shipments from Iran to Hezbollah.
In July, Mossad director Yossi Cohen gave a rare public speech in which he claimed that Iraq was now playing host to Iranian weapons.
“The Mossad has discerned a changed tendency on the part of Iran and Hezbollah: They now are trying to transfer some of their bases to northern Syria; they mistakenly believe that we will have difficulty reaching them there,” Cohen said. “At the same time, they are setting up bases and factories for sophisticated weaponry in Iraq and Lebanon.”
That section of Cohen’s speech came in the context of a discussion about Iranian covert ballistic missile production and Israel’s ability and willingness to strike them anywhere. In other words, it certainly sounded like the Mossad director was hinting that Iran had set up shop producing ballistic missiles in Iraq and Jerusalem wasn’t too happy about it.
Complaints: In addition to Israeli officials’ hints about Iranian weapons, Israel also recently complained about an Iraqi weapons company linked to Kataib Hezbollah, a U.S.-designed Iraqi Foreign Terrorist Organization and one of Iran’s closest militia allies in Iraq. The Technical Directorate for Military Production, or TDMP, an Iraqi militia small arms company, has shown off a host of weapons, including a handful of drones that bear a remarkable similarity to an Iranian model.
In a May letter to the U.N. secretary general citing Iranian sanctions violations, Israel’s U.N. ambassador wrote that “Iran has also transferred to Iraq technological know-how for the production of the Mohajem-92 unmanned aerial vehicle, enabling the Iraq Technical Directorate for Military Production to produce the Iraqi Raqeeb unmanned aerial vehicle.”
The Iranian Mohajem-92 and Iraqi Raseeb drones hardly seem like anything interesting enough to concern Israel. They’re small, tactical aircraft that are unarmed and can’t reach very far. They also pale in comparison to the scale of small arms Iran transferred to the militias it backs in Iraq during the war against ISIS after 2014.
But the company that makes them is fairly interesting. Iraqi officials have praised TDMP as a Kataib Hezbollah-affiliated company, and web registration records for its now-defunct website (tdmpiq.org) show that the person who registered TDMP’s site also registered a website for Kataib Hezbollah, a U.S.-sanctioned Iraqi militia supported by Iran’s covert action arm.
To add to the tension between Israel and Kataib Hezbollah, over the weekend two Kataib Hezbollah officials were killed in a mysterious drone strike along the Iraqi-Syrian border. Israeli officials haven’t claimed or denied responsibility for the strike, per long-standing policy, but Iranian-backed militias have blamed Israel for the strike. The strike killed Kazem Mohsen, described as a “logistical support chief” for Kataib Hezbollah.
Delivery drone of death: As if a possible new front in Iraq wasn’t complicated enough, another Iranian-aligned adversary claimed that Israel carried out a drone attack against it, this time in Lebanon. Over the weekend, Israeli forces struck and killed what they said was an Iranian drone crew preparing a drone attack against Israeli territory. Two of the men killed alongside the IRGC personnel were Hassan Yousef Zabeeb and Yasser Ahmad Daher, Hezbollah operatives allegedly trained by Iran to operate the drones.
Israeli airstrikes in Syria—including those against Hezbollah fighters—are hardly new. Israeli aircraft have struck senior Hezbollah officials tied to terrorist attacks against Israel and missile shipments bound for Lebanon several times over the past few years.
What was unusual was a near simultaneous attack against Hezbollah’s media offices in Beirut by two small, hobby drones. Hezbollah officials claimed that the two drones, which resemble commercial DJI Matrice 100 hobby drones, carried 12 pounds of explosives in an attack against the terrorist group’s offices. One of the drones reportedly carried out its attack while a separate drone failed to deliver its explosives and detonate.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah appeared in a televised speech shortly afterward fuming mad. He blamed Israel, and vowed retaliation. “If we do not respond to the Zionist attack on Dahiyeh, ‘Israel’ will repeat the same model used to attack the Hashd Shaabi sites in Iraq,” he said.
Israel isn’t shy about taking the war against Hezbollah to its home turf in Lebanon, but for the most part the two warring sides have confined their fight to Syria. With Nasrallah vowing to shoot down the Israeli drones that routinely overfly Lebanon, it looks like the shadow war between Israel and Iran’s proxies may have opened a second front there—whether Israel was responsible for the delivery drone of death attack or not.
